


Honorable Men

by gingercinderella



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 02:24:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14010129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingercinderella/pseuds/gingercinderella
Summary: After the accident, Starbuck figures out that Zak was using her to pass basic flightIt makes things strained for her with the other Adamas





	1. Before

She went through his things when she was at the apartment cleaning out her drawer, in case her things were mixed in the wrong places. There was a stack of letters in a cigar box, and she had wondered for a second if they were the letters she’d sent him when he was gone for those two weeks and she’d felt sappy. It felt good for a moment that he had held onto them, cherishing her in his own sappy way. He had been good at romantic gestures.

She skimmed through the first one she’d sent, smiling at the way she had been so in love. The next letter was on nicer paper than she used, and she opened it out of curiosity. It was from a friend of Zak’s from college, Taylor. He had talked about the man a few times.

When she finished reading the letter, she went through the rest of the box and found two more letters from Taylor. They all agreed. Worse yet, a letter with a stamp, ready to be sent to Taylor, was there. She ripped the envelope open and read the same information, in Zak’s own handwriting. The same familiar scrawl that wrote _I love you_ and _forever_ in the letters to her, now saying shit like this, nearly took her breath away.

She shoved all the papers back in the box and put it back on the bookshelf, ready to hurry out, before she thought better of it. She took the letters from Taylor and burned them. The letter to Taylor, dated two days before his death, stayed with her. She pushed it to the bottom of the bag she had and then rushed to her truck, her hands shaking almost as bad as they had when she’d first gotten the news.

 

               

* * *

 

 

Kara blared the music, trying to concentrate on that rather than the thousand of disconnected thoughts in her mind, when the knock came at the door. Getting up to answer it was like moving through molasses, every part of her begging to stay in bed for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year.

“Kara? I know you’re in there,” a voice came from the other side, so warm and concerned. Frakking Lee.

She opened the door and didn’t have the ability to try to make a good face, to pretend things were better than they were. But hey, her fiancé had just died and she had every right to look like hell. Lee sure did, even if he was in his dress greys and she was still in pajamas.

“Gods, have you showered?” He asked, stepping into the cramped apartment without asking. He’d been here with Zak two, three months ago. The first time they’d met, when Zak had made a show of introducing her to family and friends. Had it all just been a frakking show? Did Lee know?

Kara shrugged at the question and locked the door behind him, pausing to stare at the door for a moment before turning to him. She hadn’t decided what she was going to say to Lee, if she was going to say anything or demand the truth or just keep it to herself. She settled for a gruff “why should I? Doesn’t matter now.”

“The service is this afternoon and no one has seen you since the news got out. I’ve got a Karl Agathon contacting me to check in on you and I’ve never even _met_ the man, so yeah, it matters. You still have people who care about you. Zak wasn’t the only one who loved you.”

His speech was supposed to make her feel better, so impassioned, but Kara just latched onto that last part. He never knew, did he? Lee wouldn’t be enough of a dick to say that if he knew. “Fine, yeah, wait here,” she murmured and waved absently at the chair. “I’ll be right out.”

She showered quickly, going through each action on autopilot as she kept hearing the words from the letters ringing in her ears. It had been two days and they wouldn’t get out, the only thing that would drive them away for any length of time was the music, blasted loud enough to draw her out of her own mind. And the shower just had the water crashing onto her, not nearly enough.

Lee ignored her politely as she stepped out and pulled on what she had to.

“Lee…” she said slowly, considering for a moment telling him everything. They’d been close for a few weeks there, when the three of them were spending their free time together, Lee on leave and happy to spend it with his kid brother. She could tell him and cry and ruin the nearly spotless memory of Zak that Lee had every right to hold onto.

“Yeah?”

By the time he had answered, she had made her mind up. “I just. I’m sorry. This isn’t the circumstances I wanted to see you again.” She didn’t have the energy to smile like it was a joke, but it was understandable. Her fiancé had died. She had every right to be broken.

Lee just shook his head. “Not your fault, Starbuck. You did your job, all anyone could ask for.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Commander Adama invited her out to drinks.

Lee was invited, but he had leaned in and had some _words_ with his father, and then stormed off. She didn’t ask, she could talk to Lee later, but for now she had to rush home and get out of this damn uniform, get into something nice but not too nice, casual but formal enough to meet with your dead fiancé’s father for the first time.

It was easier to focus on that, focus on the clothes she put on her body, keep her stressing about appearances rather than worse things.

She hadn’t cried at the funeral, but it had been a close thing. What would she be mourning, anyways? The death of Zak, her fiancé? He didn’t exist, not in the way she had imagined him, the way she thought she knew him. Maybe she was mourning the loss of the illusion that had made her so, so happy. The illusion had been crafted to make her happy and love struck.

But Commander Adama? He had just lost his son, and he was grasping at straws for where to go next. And he deserved whatever comfort she could give him, tell him about their engagement, tell him that Zak had been bright and kind and good.

The bar was a classy place, not the kind of thing she could really afford. She had her cubits on her in a pinch, but this was the situation where she wasn’t about to pay and they both knew it. Not that she was drinking much tonight, she needed a clear mind. She needed to give the old man, as Zak had called him every now and then, whatever reassurance that he needed that his son had been good.

The pleasantries were easy enough, since she couldn’t be expected to smile and be happy. The old man certainly wasn’t. She sipped the scotch he ordered, but switched to water after it was gone and they’d turned to talking about Zak, sharing good stories.

She had those in droves. The first time they’d met, a week before his class with her started. He’d ran past her, chasing a friend on Academy grounds, and sent the pile of papers in her arms to the floor. She had been so touched when he stopped to help, even if she did yell at him. His smile was wide and his talk smooth and he invited her out that night. He invited her out for the next night as well, after splitting a bottle of ambrosia at the bar that night. He had been so surprised to find out she was his flight instructor when the schedules came out.

As she repeated the story, she could see the cracks in it. Had he pulled strings to know he would be assigned to her, and that’s why he knew to flirt? Had he pulled strings to be in her class after the date? The pair of them had told that story a handful of times, talking over eachother to get to say the cutest parts to their friends. Zak had smiled and laughed and joked at the way he’d manipulated her and everyone else, time and time again.

The commander didn’t have any part in that, it was clear enough. William Adama didn’t know a thing about her up until two weeks ago, so Zak hadn’t gone that route to get her as instructor or find out earlier than anyone else. It was good- if he’d been behind this, she didn’t know she’d do. Maybe that would send her crying to Lee, her faith in humanity and the military broken. But as it stood, he was a grieving father and she was the connection that could give him insight on his son’s last few months. She couldn’t take that away from him.

“Another scotch?” He asked, the windows gone dark and the other tables clearing out.

She nodded, and took the glass from the waitress with a tight smile.        

“To Zak,” he said gravely, holding it up for her to toast.

“To honorable men,” she murmured, clinking their glasses before downing the drink. As far as he ever had to know, that was an agreement. Zak Adama, who died an honorable man.

The old man didn’t contact her in the next few days before he left town. She didn’t know whether to expect him to or not- they weren’t anything to each other, not really. Not once Zak was dead, and when she and Lee were on the strangest of terms. He didn’t owe her anything and she didn’t owe him or his family anything. It took two months before she got any message, a secretary at the Academy letting her know that she had mail to pick up.

She had plenty of mail- she didn’t work there anymore, she had taken an extended leave of absence after Zak’s death, but mail from a Commander of a battlestar was worth far more than the other shit she got.

Getting back on campus was eerie, the nuggets joking around and having a good time as she pushed past them. She just needed to get this letter and leave. Had he figured it out? That she’d passed him because of… everything they had, or that she thought they had? She’d be frakked, but it didn’t matter to her anymore. She didn’t know if she planned to work as a pilot ever again, maybe William Adama burning that bridge for her would do some good.

The letter began with a story about Zak from childhood. Called her a gifted young pilot, a shame that she wasn’t teaching anymore. Offered her a job. The sign off at the end caught her breath- _we take care of our own._ She barely knew the man and she counted as one of his own.

Lee and William Adama, honorable men to their cores. Where the hell had Zak come from?

 


	2. You Can't Go Home Again

She woke in the hospital bed with Lee next to her, focused on papers in his lap. A schedule, probably, for who was flying CAP.

“Morning,” she murmured, the haze of whatever the doc had given her still heavy in her mind. Even opening her eyes fully was hard, took too much concentration. The pain from her knee was dulled, though, so it was worth it, more or less.

Lee looked up and smiled. “It’s pretty late at night, actually,” he answered with a shake of his head, as if she oughta know that. He set the papers down on the ground and scooted closer to the bed, reaching a hand in to hold onto hers. “You gave us a scare for a second.”

“I could see the fleet jumping away as I got closer. You gave me the scare, thinking I’d gone to all that work for a whole lotta nothing.” The thought of watching the Galactica jump away just as she got close enough made her shudder. She would have died in a Cylon raider, of all places, as soon as her rations had given way.

His hand squeezed hers to pull her out of the thought. “We had patrols as long as we could. Even after your oxygen ran out. We-“

                “I know, Lee, I know, you don’t have to defend what you did.”

                “You bend the rules for family.” The phrase was used so lightly, like it wasn’t even a question that she was family. Lee hadn’t been the only one who had believed she was worth finding, the old man had to have played his part in keeping the fleet in one place for as long as they had. It was so close to what the old man had written to her, calling her one of his own.

                She wasn’t sure what her face had done, the painkillers made things a little hard to keep track of everything at once, but Lee gave her hand a shake. “Kara? What’s wrong?” She turned to look at him and that concerned face, that look of concern near about killed her.

                _I_ _’_ _m not family,_ was one response. But after over two years on the Galactica, she near about was family with the old man. And she and Lee hadn’t seen eachother in so long, before everything had gone to shit, but they were still family. Always would be. And she wouldn’t say something like that just to hurt him.

                “I told your father,” she said instead. “You backed me into a corner and made me tell him and he was so mad. Frak, Lee, I haven’t seen him that mad since…” she trailed off, not even sure if she had seen that. Certainly not directed at her, he’d given her dressings-down for the shit she pulled but had never been so mad. “He came by, earlier. Gave me a cigar.” She nodded over at the table by the bed, where it lay, ready to be smoked.

                “I didn’t realize you hadn’t,” he answered, at least willing to look ashamed. It was quiet between them for a few moments, Lee’s eyes down. “At least you have it off your chest. No more secrets about Zak. Couldn’t have been easy, on the same ship for so long, talking about him, with that between you.”

                “Lee, close the curtain.” Her voice was quick, almost cutting him off at the end. Was this a good idea? Unlikely. But if he wanted to talk about getting something off her chest, she was going to. Taylor, the man Zak had told, wasn’t in the fleet. She was the only person alive who knew about what he’d done. And that weighed on her, and the painkillers helped to nudge her to think it was right to tell him.

                He did it, anyways, and sat back down with a strange look at her. “Everything okay?”

                “Zak isn’t… he wasn’t what you thought. He and I weren’t what you thought we were. What I thought we were.” The words were hard to find, to tell him finally, tell anyone. She reached her hand out and he grabbed it immediately, reading what she needed blessedly fast. She gave his hand a squeeze, taking his silence as permission to go on.

                “He used me. To pass? He knew he wasn’t… he struggled, he knew it. He needed a way to pass. And I was that way.”

                Lee didn’t pull his hand back, to his credit. Kara couldn’t read his face, however, just that blank expression that Lee had mastered over the last few years. She had seen him wear it when around his father, when he’d come aboard Galactica.

                “Do you have proof?” He asked after too long of a pause. “He was good- he was a good man. Honorable.”

                Kara shook her head. “He wasn’t what you thought,” she murmured. “You’re welcome to read the letter, though. It’s in my locker, with all my personal affects. I brought it with me to Galactica, to remind me.”

She had packed up her life in a hurry, ready to be on the battlestar as soon as the letter had invited her there. She brought precious little in the way of trinkets, keepsakes. The picture of the three of them was more for show than for her own sake- if she didn’t have to see Zak again, she’d be alright with that.  But she had other pictures she truly treasured, a few slim books, gifts from friends at the Academy, in a cardboard box. And at the very bottom was the unsent letter in Zak’s handwriting, so smug at the fact that he was a shoo-in to pass basic flight. Said all it cost him was a year of sleeping with a hot chick, an engagement ring when she got clingy.

She still never could figure out if he ever planned to marry her. How far the charade would go. Maybe it was a mercy that she never had to find out, but there was no mercy in robbing the Adama family of their beloved son.

Lee didn’t ask what letter, just nodded.

“He can never know,” she added. “He deserves to believe his son was good. Honorable, like the two of you.”

“Then why the hell tell me?” Lee asked, his voice still soft and Kara couldn’t make out if he was angry or what. “Why tell me now? When you said you passed him, you should have just-“

“It’s not my place to confess the sins of others, whether it’s the end of the world or not.” That day she saw her life ending in the old Viper, in that run or the next, facing an enemy that was nearing the stuff of legend. Nothing felt real. She wanted someone to know her secret. She hadn’t sought forgiveness from Lee, just a listening ear. This secret was so different, so unfair to put on anyone. She should have kept her mouth shut, shouldn’t have brought it up, but she couldn’t take it back now.

“And I’m telling you now because I was the only one left who knew. Zak wasn’t honorable, he wasn’t good, he manipulated and lied his way into the Viper that killed him. And I let him do it, I fell for it. And that’s how your family ended up calling me family.”

The fact that he’d worked hard to sign his own death certificate, to fly the Viper that he never should have, never quelled her own guilt. She had still been the one to pass him. She had still fallen for it, still let the desire to make him happy override her duty as his flight instructor.

“Kara,” Lee sighed, and she braced for it. Anger, maybe. He pulled his hand from hers and she closed her eyes, not willing to watch him leave. She was about to lose yet another person, and she could only pray that he didn’t tell his father and have her lose one more.


	3. Home

The heavy raider jumped to Kobol’s coordinates and the dradis lit up with civilian signals. No Galactica, she noticed after a second. The last month couldn’t have been easier for the fleet than it had been for her- but when had anything been easy for anyone? What ships were in orbit were maybe a third of the fleet. Had they left the Galactica or had Galactica left them? Didn’t matter, really, if no one responded to her.

She was on the comm, trying to contact the ships, and got back radio silence. “Hello? Is anyone reading me?” Sharon stood beside her, nodding as she fiddled with the wires to say that it was sending the signal out correctly. It wasn’t a problem on their end. For a heart crushing second, she feared that the ships were empty. Some catastrophe, mutiny or cylons or plague, had left the Galactica no choice but to abandon the ships to die. At least around Kobol they were home, in a sense.

The radio crackled online. “This is Astral Queen, please confirm yourself Starbuck.”

The voice was Lee’s, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and was the last voice she expected to hear. But it was a lifeline for her, made her smile for the first time in a while. The exchange over radio after that went quickly, instructions to dock.

“Thanks, Apollo. Good to see a friendly face out here,” she said into the radio as Sharon flew in to land. Friendly face was a stretch, going by where they had been in the weeks before she’d jumped to Caprica, but it might be the friendliest face on the Astral Queen, for all she knew. And Lee was familiar and a comforting presence, regardless of whatever else had happened. And after Caprica? She needed comforting and familiar.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Starbuck. One of these days I might just shoot down your Cylon ship.”

Once docked, she took a second in the airlock to take a breath. She could do this. After everything that had happened, facing Lee wasn’t supposed to be stressful in comparison, but she found herself fearing that cool indifference that he’d presented her with ever since the crash and the talk about Zak.

She stepped out to the Astral Queen- she hadn’t been here since the riots- and he was right there, heading straight for her, a smile on his face. His arms raised slowly as if for a hug and she walked faster to meet him and be enveloped in his hug, a smile on her face, too. Maybe after whatever had happened here, he needed comforting and familiar, too. It felt like months back, holding onto each other and rocking for a moment as if there was nothing between them at all.

He pulled back and rested his forehead on hers, their noses just barely touching as they shared a moment that felt like forgiveness, his arms still protectively around her. She knew other people stood around them, watching, but for that moment, she didn’t care. She just wanted this, wanted to feel like all was well in the world even when it was the furthest thing from it. “Good to see you too, Captain,” she breathed, before pulling away to face the president and shake her hand.

The hatch to the heavy raider creaked, the sound of someone following, and she turned to Lee, about to warn him, but not fast enough. She wasn’t a diplomat, and everything unfolded too fast for her to follow, one second with Lee’s hand still on her waist and in the next with Lee’s gun against Sharon’s cheek and Helo’s gun to Lee’s head.

Whatever forgiveness she had earned for what she’d said about Zak felt like it was lost when she tried to defend the Cylon, and Lee screamed back that it had shot his father. The men marched Sharon out as Helo yelled for Kara to do something and she felt gutted at all she’d missed. Adama, shot? Frak. She’d chosen the wrong moment to leave- maybe her leaving had kick started all of this, for all she knew.

As the president left, Lee turned to her and grabbed her elbow. “How about we go somewhere to chat too?” He asked; gone was the fury in his voice from when he spoke of his father getting shot. Instead he just sounded weary. She looked back at Helo quickly and he nodded. If he asked her to stay she would, but she desperately wanted to see Lee and talk to him face to face for the first time since the sick bay. He’d avoided her ever since as much as someone could on a ship like Galactica when they were both still pilots and he was the CAG.

Neither of them had much to say as Lee led them through the ship and too his bunk, a small room with nothing but a bed and a shelf. But it was all his and private, which certainly meant something about Lee’s ranking in the new system.

“Are you okay?” She asked as soon as he closed the hatch behind them. Lee turned around and shrugged. “Are you... what happened?”

Lee let out a mirthless laugh. “You jumping for Caprica on the president’s orders changed everything,” he answered, and sat down heavily on the bed. “Come here, you don’t look so steady on your feet.” He held his hand out to her, and she didn’t hesitate to follow suit, dropping into the bed, his arm around her back. She pressed her luck and leaned in, her head on his shoulder. It was closer, more intimate, but still easier than looking Lee in the eyes right now.

“A gun shot’ll do that to you, plus Cylons are surgeons now,” she said softly, and could feel all his tiny movements and adjustments still as he turned to look at her. She didn’t try to look up at him, didn’t want to try and answer the questions he asked loudly without saying a word. “You first, tell me what happened.”

Despite unquestionably wanting to know about her, he did just that. As he spun out his tale, she realized that maybe all of it was her fault- jumping away, following the president instead of Adama, had thrown everything into chaos. Lee didn’t seem to blame her for it, somehow.

“Now you,” he said when the story came up to present day, waiting for her as they orbited Kobol.

Kara tried to collect her thoughts- at least it would be easy to pick where to begin, but what did she want to tell him? She couldn’t tell him about Sam, couldn’t bear to talk about the farm. But she didn’t want to keep secrets from him, wanted to start out whatever they were doing on the right foot.

“If you can?”

She turned to look at him for the first time since sitting down. His arm, now around her shoulders, adjusted for that and she shrugged. “It was… a lot, all at once. And I don’t. I can’t lie to you, Lee, not after everything. But I don’t know if I can.”

He nodded, his arm moving to rub her back gently. She didn’t want to consider moving from this spot, not when this was the most comfortable she’d been in ages. Not even the compound with Sam, the nights of desperate frakking and then holding each other in the dark, had felt like this. Years of knowing Lee, trusting him, meant that even if her spine was twisted a little, her arm not sure where to go, she loved this. As safe as she felt in a Viper cockpit with a pilot she trusted out in space with her, sure that no one could touch her. This just had the bonus of being warm and being Lee.

An hour later, they’d managed to transition from sitting on the bed to laying on it, barely any words spoken to slot themselves together, Kara’s back to Lee and his arms still around her protectively. The clothes she’d brought back from Caprica reeked and were dirty with real dirt, but they didn’t mention it.

“After you jumped,” Lee said softly when Kara had begun to doze. She roused herself to pay attention. “I remembered what you’d said that day. Where that letter you called your proof was.” She didn’t know to do anything but nod, not afraid of what came next because she’d gotten his forgiveness already, she knew where this was going, but was nevertheless worried. That letter wasn’t easy to read; knowing that a man you thought you knew was so, so different would never be easy. “If I’d known, if I’d had an inkling, I would have-“

“Don’t,” she cut him off. “Zak was good at what he did, and he was thorough. If he hadn’t left those letters, I never would have known. Your father never suspected. No one could have. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“I didn’t want to believe it.”

Kara turned herself over in the bed so she could look at Lee. “It’s why I never told you. You shouldn’t have had to believe it, shouldn’t have known. It was better that you could just believe he was the good brother.”

“No. It’s good I knew. I just… didn’t want to, for a while.”

Obviously. “I could have found a better way to tell you.”

Lee nodded. “You were high on pain meds. Things just happened the way that they did. I reacted poorly. I didn’t want to believe you, I wanted you to lie about my brother rather than be honest about something like that.”

“Fair. Just. Don’t do it again, and we’ll call it even? I kept that secret, you were a dick, an eye for an eye.”

The hint of a laugh that elicited from Lee was worth it.

“I should check to see how things are,” he murmured after another comfortable silence. Kara had snuggled closer, begun to doze again and she whined at the sound of that. “They know where you live. If things are bad, they’d get you. Get some sleep with me and if they drag you out to deal with things, then think about it then.” She smiled up at him dopily. “Deal?”

“Deal,” he answered, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning, Starbuck.”

“Wake me up before you leave, Captain,” she mumbled as she let the exhaustion pulled her under.


End file.
